Tag Archives: CBRT

A feature of the modern era is the way that we are presented crises but they then fall off the radar screen. An example of this has been Turkey which hit the media heights but has now faded away. Let us update ourselves via the view of Commerzbank on last months central bank meeting.

The Turkish central bank (CBT) left its benchmark interest rate unchanged at today’s meeting. In our view, this was a major policy mistake. CBT commented that it maintains a tight policy stance. But, when the benchmark rate is 24% and inflation is also 24%, how is this stance “tight”? The decision shows that CBT has not morphed into an active inflation-targeting central bank as some government officials have claimed. Rather CBT is simply taking the path of least resistance – since the market is forgiving at the moment, why ruffle political feathers by continuing to hike rates? Given this CB attitude, prepare for more lira volatility down the line.” ( via FXStreet )

There is a large amount to cover here and let us start with the idea that a major mistake was made. Also that this from the CBRT is wrong.

The tight stance in monetary policy will be maintained decisively until the inflation outlook displays a significant improvement…….Accordingly, the Committee has decided to maintain the tight monetary policy stance and keep the policy rate (one week repo auction rate) constant at 24 percent.

There are many ways of measuring such a concept but an interest-rate of 24% on its own in these times makes you think, especially if we recall that it had been raised by 6.25% at the previous meeting. How many countries even have interest-rates of 6.25% right now? The real issue here to my mind is that Commerzbank lost perspective with this by looking at inflation at the moment rather than looking ahead. If we take the view of the CBRT from back then the outlook was this.

In this respect, inflation is projected to be 23.5 percent at end-2018, and then fall to 15.2 percent at end-2019 and 9.3 percent at end-2020 before stabilizing around 5 percent in the medium term. Forecasts are based on a monetary policy framework that envisages that the tight monetary policy stance will be maintained for an extended period.

On this basis if we look ahead to when we might expect the interest-rate rise to be fully effective we should start with the end-2019 figure of 15.2%. Against that outlook then a real interest-rate of 9% is for these times eye-wateringly tight. Of course caution is required as central banks are hardly the best forecasters, But I am reminded of the template I set out on the third of May for such a situation.

However some of the moves can make things worse as for example knee-jerk interest-rate rises. Imagine you had a variable-rate mortgage in Buenos Aires! You crunch your domestic economy when the target is the overseas one.

My warning was given when interest-rates in Argentina were 30.25%, by the end of that day they were 3% higher and now the LELIQ rate is 68.1%. Sadly they are living out my warning.

On a yearly basis, the biggest price hike was in furnishing and household equipment in October with 37.92 percent.

Initially Commerzbank may think it was right but this is only a small nudge higher in annual terms as the monthly increase more than halves. We also get a reminder that this is inflation which is essentially exchange-rate driven by the way that the core inflation rate is so similar to the headline. This is joined by which sectors are influenced by imports showing it is a bad time to overhaul your wardrobe or redecorate your home. Speaking of homes there will be central bankers reading this thinking that the rise in house prices is a triumph. The wealth effects! The wealth effects! Back in your box please.

The Turkish Lira

There have been changes here as we look to see what influence it will have on inflation trends. Here is @UmarFarooq_

Turkish #Lira is regaining some of its loses, looks set to return to pre-sanction days of August. Went from 6.3 to 5.3 versus dollar in one month. Still a ways to go compared to one year ago, when it was 3.8 #USDTRY

Some of the move has been in relation to political changes but from our point of view that only matters if they intervene again. The fact is that a lot of inflationary pressure has faded in the move from the peak of 7.21 against the US Dollar at the height of the crisis to 5.34 as I type this.

So whilst there is still inflationary pressure in the system it has faded quite a lot and if you believe World Economics things are still out of line.

The Turkish Lira has an FX rate of 5.7 but a PPP value of 2.72 against the USD. ( PPP is Purchasing Power Parity)

Of course with inflation so high PPP may need a bit of an update.

Comment

The exchange-rate is the (F)X-Factor here but the inflation trend is now turning although due to base effects the headline may not respond for a couple of months or so. In some ways like so many things these days events have sped up and it has been like a crisis on speed. Here is the latest official trade data via Google Translate.

Our foreign trade deficit decreased by 92.8% to 529 million dollars in October compared to the same period of the previous year……..October, our exports increased by 13.1% compared to the same month of the previous year and reached 15 billion 732 million dollars. Our exports increased to the highest level of all time and broke the record of the Republican history.
In October, our imports decreased by 23.5 percent to 16 billion 261 million dollars.

There is an intriguing hint that the Ottoman export performance may have been quite something but we learn several things. Turkey seems to have a very price competitive economy as we see both exports and imports responding in size and in short order. We also have a large slow down and indeed recessionary hint from the size of the fall in imports. Next we admire their ability to have the October figures available on the 1st of November. Also if we look at the year so far you might be surprised at one of the names below.

In January-October period, exports to Germany increased 8.7% to $ 13.5 billion, while exports to the UK increased 17.5% to $ 9.3 billion.

Also Turkey seems to have avoided the automotive slow down which today has spread to Ford suppliers in Valencia.

Thus looking ahead the inflationary episode is now fading as ironically another consequence of the lower exchange-rate which is trade looks to be moving into surplus. For once the real economy is moving as quickly as the financial one. However one aspect that we do not know yet is the size of the slow down or recession partly because a sign of it – lower imports – flatters GDP via trade and often more quickly than the other numbers we receive show the actual cause of it. If you want a Commerzbank style Turkish economy imagine all of the above with another interest-rate increase……

Back on the 3rd of May I pointed out that yet another feature of economics 101 was not working these days. Here was my response to interest-rate rises from the central bank of Argentina or BCRA.

This is perhaps the most common response and in my view it is the most flawed. The problem is twofold. Firstly you can end up chasing you own tail like a dog. What I mean by this is that markets can expect more interest-rate rises each time the currency falls and usually that is exactly what it does next. Why is this? Well if anticipating a 27,25%% return on your money is not doing the job is 30.25% going to do it?

Since then the BCRA has indeed ended up chasing its own tail like a dog, as interest-rates are now an eye watering 60%. But the sequence of rises has been accompanied by further currency falls, as back then an exchange rate to the US Dollar of 21/22 ( it was a volatile day) has been replaced by 39.4. To my mind this has been influenced by the second factor I looked at back in May.

Next comes the way that markets discount this in terms of forward exchange rates which now will factor in the higher interest-rate by lowering the forward price of the Peso. So against the US Dollar it will be of the order of 28% lower in a year’s time so the expected return in each currency is equal. This should not matter but human psychology and nature intervene and it turns out often to matter and helps the currency lower which of course is exactly the wrong result.

Right now the forward price of the Argentine Peso will be heavily discounted by the 60% interest-rate. At least the Argentines got some welcome good news on the rugby front on Saturday when they beat Australia. Although they currently seem unable to avoid bad news for long.

The Argentine peso has lost more than half its value, but U2 frontman Bono is advocating for the economic well-being of the Argentine people ( Bloomberg ).

Turkey

As you can imagine the announcement below on the 3rd of this month from the Turkish central bank or CBRT made me mull the thoughts above.

monetary stance will be adjusted at the September Monetary Policy Committee Meeting in view of the latest developments.

On the day itself ( last Thursday) the water got very muddy for a while as President Erdogan again made a case for low interest-rates. He apparently has a theory that high interest-rates create high inflation. But the CBRT is not a believer in that.

The consensus was that this was a good idea as highlighted by the economist Timothy Ash.

Turkey – huge move by the CBRT, doing 625bps, taking the base rate to 24%. Respect. Difficult decision set against huge political pressure, but the right should set a floor, and gives the lira and Turkish assets, banks etc a chance.

I have more than a few doubts about that. The simplest is what calculations bring you to a 6.25% rise, or was it plucked out of thin air? Added to that is the concept of a floor and giving the currency and banks a chance. Really? The words of Newt from the film Aliens comes to mind.

It wont make any difference

Initially the Turkish Lira did respond with a bounce. It rallied to around 6.1 versus the US Dollar on the day and then pushed higher to 6.01 on Friday. In response I tweeted this.

In the case of Argentina the half-life of the currency rally was 24 hours at best….

So as I checked the situation this morning I had a wry smile as I noted the Lira had weakened to 6.26 versus the US Dollar. I also note that the coverage in the Financial Times had someone who agrees with me albeit perhaps by a different route.

But Cristian Maggio, EM strategist at TD Securities, said the central bank did not go far enough, because inflation was likely to rise beyond 20 per cent, and “higher inflation will require even higher rates”.

On the day some speculators will have got their fingers singed as the comments from President Erdogan sent the currency weaker at first, so following that the CBRT move whip sawed them. If that was a tactical plan it succeeded, but that is very different to calling this a strategic success.

Another issue is that the currency may well be even more volatile looking forwards. This is because holding a short position versus the US Dollar has a negative carry of 22% or so and against the Euro has one of 24% or so. Thus there will be a tendency to hold the Turkish Lira for the carry and then to jump out ahead of any possible bad news. The problem with that is not everyone can jump out at once! Any falls will lead to a mass exodus or panic and we know from the experience of past carry trades that the subsequent moves are often large ones.

Foreign Debt

Brad Setser has crunched the numbers on this.

Turkey has about $180 billion external debt coming due, according to the latest central bank data. And most of that is denominated in foreign currency. The Central Bank of Turkey’s foreign exchange reserves are now just over $75 billion, and the banks may have about $25 billion (or a bit less now) in foreign exchange of their own. I left out Turkey’s gold reserves, in part because they are in large part borrowed from the banks and unlikely to be usable.

The total external debt is now a bit over US $450 billion. Very little of that is the government itself although the state banks are responsible for some of it. The problem is thus one for the private-sector and the banks.

How this plays out is very hard to forecast as we do not know how many companies will not be able to pay, and how much of a domino effect that would have on other companies. Also we can be sure that both the government and CBRT will be looking to support such firms, but we can also be sure that they do not have the firepower to support all of them! This is another factor making things very volatile.

The domestic economy

There are a lot of factors at play here but let me open by linking this to the foreign debt. If we look back we would also be adding a current account deficit to the problems above but this is getting much smaller and may soon disappear. From the third of this month.

There should be a boost for exports which will help some but so far the main player has been a fall in imports which were 22.4% lower in the merchandise trade figures above. So a real squeeze is being applied to the economy which the GDP figures will initially record as a boost, as imports are a subtraction from GDP. So they will throw a curve ball as the situation declines.

Added to that is this which was before the latest interest-rate rise.

Evidence of a large credit crunch in Turkey continues to build. Data are now available through Sep. 7 and point to a sharp slowing in the flow of credit, both in Lira- and FX-denominated lending. The credit slowdown in turn is a reflection of the BoP "sudden stop." pic.twitter.com/wmtYsSwvpo

Switching to a year on year basis the impact so far of this new credit crunch is around three-quarters of the 2008/09 one. The new higher official interest-rate seems set to put this under further pressure as the banks tend to borrow short ( which is now much more expensive) and lend long ( which will remain relatively cheap for a while).

Comment

A major problem in this sort of scenario was explained by Carole King some years ago.

But it’s too late, baby, now it’s too late
Though we really did try to make it
Something inside has died and I can’t hide
And I just can’t fake it, Oh no no no no no

Regular readers will be aware that it is in my opinion as important when you move interest-rates as what you do. Sadly that particular boat sailed some time ago for Turkey ( and Argentina) and macho style responses that are too late may only compound the problem. Or as the CBRT release puts it.

slowdown in domestic demand accelerates

It must be a very grim time for workers and consumers in Turkey so let me end by wishing them all the best in what are hard times as well as a little humour for hard times.

Over the past few days we have seen the expected height of summer lull punctured by events in Turkey. This morning there has been a signal that this has become a wider crisis as our measure of this the Japanese Yen has rallied to 110.2 versus the US Dollar. It has pushed the Euro down 1.2 to 125.3 Yen as well. That sets the tone for equity markets as well via its inverse relationship with the Nikkei 225 equity index which was done 414 points at 21884. Another more domestic sign is the search for scapegoats or as they are called these days financial terrorists.

The most amusing response to this I have seen is that they should start with @realdonaldtrump.

What has happened?

Essentially the dam broke on the exchange rate on Friday. In the early hours it was trading at 5.6 versus the US Dollar then as Paul Simon would put it the Lira began “slip sliding away” . Then the man who may well now be financial terrorist number one put the boot in showing that he will to coin a phrase kick a man when he is down.

I have just authorized a doubling of Tariffs on Steel and Aluminum with respect to Turkey as their currency, the Turkish Lira, slides rapidly downward against our very strong Dollar! Aluminum will now be 20% and Steel 50%. Our relations with Turkey are not good at this time!

It was time to finish with Paul Simon and replace him with “trouble,trouble,trouble” by Taylor Swift as the already weak Turkish Lira plunged into the high sixes versus the US Dollar. As ever there is doubt as to the exact bottom but it closed just below 6.5 so in a broad sweep we are looking at a 16% fall on the day. Last night in the thin Pacific markets it quickly went above 7 and if my chart if any guide ( 7.2 was reported at the time) the drop went to 7.13. So another sign of a currency crisis is ticked off as we note the doubt over various levels but if course the trend was very clear.

The official response

There were various speeches whilst mostly seemed to be calling for divine intervention. This seemed to remind people even more of a company which of course famously claimed to be doing God’s work.

The particular target of 7.1 had seemed so far away when it was pointed out but suddenly it was near on Friday and exceeded overnight. As ever when there are challenges to the “precious” there is an immediate response from the authorities.

To support effective functioning of financial markets and flexibility of the banks in their liquidity management;

Turkish lira reserve requirement ratios have been reduced by 250 basis points for all maturity brackets.

The maximum average maintenance facility for FX liabilities has been raised to 8 percent.

In addition to US dollars, euro can be used for the maintenance against Turkish lira reserves under the reserve options mechanism.

That was from the central bank or CBRT which estimated the benefit as being this.

With this revision, approximately 10 billion TL, 6 billion US dollars, and 3 billion US dollars equivalent of gold liquidity will be provided to the financial system.

I guess it felt it had to start with the Turkish Lira element but these days that is the smaller part. This also adds to the action last Monday which added some 2.2 billion US Dollars of liquidity. So more today and an explicit mention of a Turkish Lira element.

There was also a press release on financial markets which did at one point more explicitly touch on the foreign exchange market.

This did help for a while as the Turkish Lira went back to Friday’s close but it has not lasted as it is 6.83 versus the US Dollar as I type this.

Why does this matter?

Turkey

The ordinary person is already being hit by the past currency falls and now will see inflation head even higher than the 15.85% reported in July. There was some extra on the way as the producer price index rose to 25% but of course that is behind the times now. The author Louis Fishman who writes about Turkey crunched some numbers.

For many of middle class, a good wage for last 3-4 years has been around 6000-7000 Turkish Lira a month. It has unfortunately decreased in the dollar rate but was still sustainable. This is no longer true. Someone who made 6500 TL in January 2015 made 2,826$ a month. Now: 1,014$.

For a while there will be two situations as foreign goods get much more expensive and domestic ones may not. But as we have noted with the inflation data over time domestic prices rise too.

We have note before the foreign currency borrowing in Turkey which will be feeling like a noose around the neck of some companies right now. From the 13th of July/

Since 2003 $95bn has been invested into the country’s energy sector, of which $51bn remains to be paid. This figure represents 15% of the $340bn owed by non-financial companies in overseas liabilities, according to data from the nation’s central bank. ( Power Technology)

So there will be increasing foreign currency stresses as well as bank stresses in the system right now. The financial chain will be under a lot of strain as we wait to see what turns out to be the weakest link. So far today bank share prices have fallen by around 10% and of course that is in Turkish Lira.

Internationally

As ever we start with the banks where in terms of scale the situation is led by the Spanish and then the French banks with BBVA and BNP being singled out. Italy is under pressure too via Unicredit but this is more that it had troubles in the first place rather than being at the top of the list. There is some UK risk but so far the accident prone RBS does not seem to have been especially involved in this particular accident.

Wider still we have seen currency moves with the US Dollar higher but the peak so far seems to be the South African Rand which has fallen over 3% at one point today adding to past falls. Of course again there is a chain here around various financial markets as we wait to see if anything breaks.

Comment

These situations require some perspective as it is easy to get too caught up in the melee. So let us go back to the 8th of June 2015 where we looked at this.

Turkey’s lira weakened to an all-time low……..The currency tumbled as much as 5.2 percent…….The lira dropped the most since October 2008 on a closing basis to 2.8096 per dollar……..The Borsa Istanbul 100 Index sank 8.2 percent at the open of trading.

Familiar themes although of course the levels were very different. Were there signs of “trouble,trouble,trouble”?

So we have an economy which has chosen economic growth as its policy aim and it has ignored inflation and trade issues.

Since then Turkey has seen sustained inflation and trade problems leading us to the source of where we are now. I see more than a few blaming the tightening of US monetary policy and what is called QT as drivers here but I think they are tactical additions on a strategic trend which is better illustrated by this from the 13th of July.

Turkey’s annual current account deficit in 2017 was around $47.3 billion, compared to the previous year’s figure of $33.1 billion.

As ever if you get ahead of the rush you can feel good as these from the 3rd of May highlight from Lionel Barber.

Good market spot: Turks are buying gold to hedge against booming inflation and a falling currency

Which got this reply from Henry Pryor.

Anecdotally central London agents tell me they are seeing an increase in Turkish buyers this year…

Or if you do not want to bother with the analysis just take note of the establishment view.

World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim from October 2013.

Turkey’s economic achievements are an inspiration for many other developing countries

Recently I watched a BBC Four documentary series on the House of Osman or as we call it the Ottoman Empire which extended into south-east Europe as well as around the Mediterranean into North Africa. Now we associate it with decline and the phrase “young Turks” which oddly seems to have given inspiration to Rod Stewart but back in time it was a thriving Empire managing to rule parts of the world that we now consider not only as hot-spots but maybe too hot to handle. Now we find that the subject of a possible empire is in the news yet again.

Investors have been unnerved by Mr Erdogan’s decision to place his son-in-law in charge of the economy brief while sidelining familiar and respected former ministers. ( Financial Times)

Promoting family members is something of an in thing as is some of the language used.

Berat Albayrak, who is also Mr Erdogan’s son-in-law, said the central bank would be effective “like never before” and promised to bring soaring inflation down into the single digits “in the shortest time possible”.
“Speculation about the independence and decision-making mechanisms of the central bank is unacceptable,” he added. “A central bank that is effective like never before will be one of the fundamental aims of the policies of the new era.”

He failed however to use the trump card of a “bigly”. Of course the Financial Times somehow still manages to believe in central bank independence whereas we abandoned such thoughts years ago. Whilst the example below is admittedly extreme the theme is familiar.

Turkey’s central bank announced three interest rate rises during the campaign for June 24 elections, with a cumulative total of 500 basis points. The bank’s benchmark lending rate stands at 17.75 per cent.

So up,up and indeed up and away whereas the rhetoric is rather different. This is Hurriyet Daily News quoting President Erdogan on the 11th of May

“My belief is that interest rates are the mother of all evils. Interest rates are the cause of inflation. Inflation is a result, not a cause. We need to push down interest rates,”

As we wonder if Bank of England Governor Mark Carney was taking notes it is time to switch to the economic impact of all of this. The first factor we have already noted which is an interest-rate of 17.75% which is out of kilter with the economic times by some distance. As opposed to the -0.4% of neighbouring Greece or the 0.1% of Israel if we look the other way. So a break is being applied.

The Exchange-Rate

We can switch quickly to this as we know we only get rises in interest-rates like this if the national currency is in what Taylor Swift would call “trouble,trouble,trouble”. The latest Central Bank of Turkey minutes puts it somewhat euphemistically.

exchange rate developments

Or as the Hurriyet Daily News puts it.

The lira weakened to a record low of 4.9767 against the dollar late on July 11. The currency opened the July 12 trading at around 4.83 against the greenback.

The lira has shed nearly 25 percent of its value against the U.S. currency so far this year.

If we look at the pattern we see that the rate has been heading south for some time as five years ago it was at 2.04. However an acceleration started at the end of April when it was 4.05. Or returning to Ms Swift.

And the haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate

If we stay with financial markets there is a familiar sequence of responses to this.

Fall-out from Turkey’s tumbling lira hammered banking shares on July 11, sending the Istanbul stock market to its biggest one-day fall in two years.

The main share index dropped more than 5 percent while bank stocks lost 9 percent in their worst day for five years.

The yield on Turkey’s benchmark 10-year bond rose to 18.48 percent from 17.36 percent at close on July 10.

Central bankers will be panicking at all the negative wealth effects here. Care is needed as in such volatile circumstances markets ebb and flow quickly although it has mainly been ebb. Also the official interest-rate and bond yield numbers remind me of my analysis of how to deal with a foreign exchange crisis on May 3rd. If you think that a currency is collapsing then even ~18% interest-rates do not help much and even worse via forward or futures calculations it makes it look like the currency will drop even further. At some point investors will think things have stabilised and especially in these times will pile in for a juicy yield but when?

I’ll never miss a beat, I’m lightning on my feet

The trouble is that in the meantime you have slammed the brakes on your domestic economy.

Inflation

This is a consequence of the lower currency as the price of imported goods and services rises. For a while existing contracts may be a shelter but then it hits home.

In May, consumer prices rose by 1.62 percent and annual inflation increased by 1.30 points to 12.15 percent. The uptick in inflation spread across subgroups in this period ( CBRT)

Last week we learned that the CBRT was right to expect more bad news.

Inflation rose to 15.39 percent year-on-year, the highest annual rate since 2004 after a new method of calculating price rises was introduced, and month-on-month CPI inflation leapt to 2.61 percent – nearly double the forecast in a Reuters poll.

It looks set to go higher still.

Trade

Whilst a lower currency boosts an economy as price competitive exports and imports respond this takes time. Before they do you are actually in a worse situation as your imports cost more as the J-Curve and Reverse J-Curve entwine. Thus we get this.

According to the data released on July 11, the current account deficit rose to $5.9 billion in May from $5.4 billion in the corresponding month last year, with a nearly 9.6 percent year-on-year increase. ( Hurriyet Daily News)…….The country’s 12-month rolling deficit reached $57.6 billion in May, the data also showed.

This compares to these.

Turkey’s annual current account deficit in 2017 was around $47.3 billion, compared to the previous year’s figure of $33.1 billion.

Comment

Much of this feels like the UK in the 1970s although to be fair Turkish inflation it has yet to hit the 26.9% seen in the summer of 1975. A sharp brake has been applied to the economy via the higher cost of imports and via higher interest-rates. If we move to the business sector there will also be an impact from this.

The Turkish energy sector is facing an increasingly unstable situation with a rapidly declining lira making it impossible to repay billions of dollars’ worth of loans accumulated over the past 15 years.

Since 2003 $95bn has been invested into the country’s energy sector, of which $51bn remains to be paid. This figure represents 15% of the $340bn owed by non-financial companies in overseas liabilities, according to data from the nation’s central bank. ( Power Technology)

This is also familiar as countries which are in danger of trouble make it worse by borrowing in a foreign currency because it is cheaper in interest-rate terms. After all what could go wrong? It is also reminiscent of the foreign currency mortgage crisis of parts of south-eastern Europe. At least they did not borrow in Swiss Francs.

A recession is a danger as this hits and we will have to wait and see what develops but as to the talk of plenty of measures that sounds a little like capital controls to me. However the official view echoes Ms. Swift again.

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About the author

I am a freelance economist who studied at the London School of Economics. My speciality was (and still is) monetary economics. I worked in the City of London for several investment banks and then on my own account over a period of 15 years. After initially working in the government bond department at Phillips and Drew Ltd. I moved on into the derivatives arena with options of all types being a speciality. I never lost my specialisation in UK interest rates and also traded as a local on the London International Financial Futures Exchange where I mostly traded futures and options on future and present UK interest rates. So with my specialisations of monetary economics and konwledge of derivatives I have plenty of expertise to deploy on the financial and economic crisis which has unfolded in recent years.

I have also worked in Tokyo Japan again in the derivatives sphere and would particularly recommend Japanese food with a pork tonkatsu box lunch being one of my favourites. My name is Shaun Richards and as well as writing economics reports and analysis I also give speeches and lectures.Should one or all of these be of interest then please contact me via the contact details on this website.

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